Project description
How inequality reproduces in schools
Income and wealth inequality are a threat to social stability in any society. The ERC-funded PERPETUATE project hopes to examine how inequality may be self-perpetuating by creating a competitive school culture. In unequal societies, status is a key factor, and parents and teachers are likely to prioritise the creation of a competitive environment in schools. While privileged students in unequal societies may do very well in a competitive school culture, the disadvantaged may do poorly, thus creating a widening gap in achievement and, consequently, perpetuating inequality. The project will use large-scale panel data from students and surveys of teachers and parents. By combining longitudinal and experimental methods, the goal is to develop a multilevel psychosocial model to suggest ways to break the cycle of inequality.
Objective
The perpetuation of income and wealth inequality across generations threatens the foundations of a fair and stable society. This project investigates the novel idea that economic inequality perpetuates itself by creating a culture of competitiveness among children and adolescents in schools. I propose that contexts of economic inequality increase the importance of status, leading parents and teachers to encourage students to be more competitive. While students from advantaged families often excel in competitive settings, those from disadvantaged families struggle, widening the socioeconomic achievement gap and creating a vicious cycle of inequality.
The project has three parts:
• PART 1 will combine 66 pre-identified panel datasets, covering 738,190 students from 43 countries, with annual indicators of inequality at the country, region, and school levels. It will test (i) whether rising inequality predicts widening socioeconomic achievement gaps and post-school disparities, and (ii) whether perceived parental and teacher practices explain these trends.
• PART 2 will sample 5,000 teachers and 5,000 parents of secondary school students in five countries with various educational systems. It will test (i) whether local inequality predicts parental and teacher practices that encourage competitiveness, and (ii) whether experimentally induced inequality reinforces these trends.
• PART 3 will sample 5,000 students across 20 schools to test (i) whether inducing a competitive climate during a task widens the socioeconomic achievement gap, and (ii) an intervention to mitigate this effect.
While ambitious, this project is feasible, with partnerships secured with scholars and educational stakeholders across countries. By integrating longitudinal and experimental data from students, teachers, and parents, it will build an innovative multilevel psychosocial framework for understanding the intergenerational transmission of inequality and informing policies to break this cycle.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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(opens in new window) ERC-2025-COG
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1015 LAUSANNE
Switzerland
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